Messenger
by Annie D
Summary: Kara of Argo City has never met her cousin. When she finally gets the chance to, he's gone. Based on the movies Supergirl, Superman, Superman II and Superman Returns. Workinprogress.


**Note**: Based on the canon from the movies _Supergirl_, _Superman_, _Superman II_ and _Superman Returns_.

* * *

It didn't have to be Kara who returned to Earth with the message, but no one else wanted the job.

She'd never even considered the possibility of going back in the first place, because during those weeks she'd spent as Linda Lee, the confrontations she'd had with Selena and the final frantic flight back home, all she'd thought about had been getting the omegahedron back safely. Then when she'd actually returned and life flowed back into the dimmed Argo City, the coos and praises sung on her and the fallen Zaltar had been quickly been replaced with curious questions and prodding on the subject of Kal-El.

She'd only mentioned him in passing, when her parents had embraced her and the words had spilled out of her mouth as she'd started a long litany of things she'd seen on the fabled Earth of outer space.

"He'd survived the trip?" her father had said, just before the disbelief gave way to pride that Uncle Jor-El's efforts in saving the proud lineage had been successful.

"He's all grown up," she'd told them. Not just grown up, but also accepted by the Earthens, allowed to roam free, hailed a hero, loved by all and proudly wearing the colors of the House of El. Kara's father had been particularly interested in that last part, which he'd repeated in the inevitable meetings with the elders that followed quickly over the next few days.

During that time Kara had, at the behest of her mother, quickly shut away the clothes of El colors in her room, away from the clean whiteness of their city and the curious eyes of the children who'd never seen such hues. The few that had been lucky enough to see the clothes before they were shut away took to Kara's side in secret, where she told them stories about the green of trees and the blue of skies in hushed tones while the adults discussed other more important matters.

As it turned out, the most important of them all had been Kal-El himself.

"It is our duty," an elder had said, not to Kara directly, but she'd been completely randomly wandering the upper floors of the city while the meeting had been going and had no choice but to overhear the conversation, "Kal-El thinks that he is the last survivor of Krypton. He needs to know that there are others who have survived with him."

"But he has grown up as one of them," said another elder. "Even if Jor-El has been successful in teaching his son the ways of Krypton, Kal-El has been raised as a simple Earthen."

The debate went on for days, until Kara thought that it'd turn into one of those things where they talked for the sake of talking (though you couldn't blame them because after living as an Earthen she'd come to realise that there really wasn't much else to do in the city, besides thinking up and solving ever-more-complicated six-degree geometry) and so it took her by surprise when one day her father had come to her, pulled her aside and carefully asked:

"Kara, are you brave enough to go back to Earth?"

_Brave_? Kara had looked at her father with a few long blinks of confusion until she realised that he, along with all the other adults, were utterly terrified of outer space.

"It is a strange world full of strange things," Kara had said carefully, not wanting to let it come across that said things were just as wondrous and fantastic as they were strange, "But if I had to, I would do it again."

And that, as it seemed, had been that. Their engineers reconstructed Zaltar's machine from the specs recovered from his workshop and before long Kara found herself once again donned in the colors of House of El and standing in front of the open petals of the interdimensional traveler pod. Though this time, her parents were on either side of her, the rest of Argo City filling every possible space on the open floor, and a single message crystal was carefully being held in one of her hands.

The task was simple enough. Kara would find her cousin and give him the crystal-encoded message put together by the elders, and then come back home. This time there would not be any evil sorceresses involved, nor any countdown to the city's imminent destruction looming over head. Just a simple delivery service, though by her own suspicions and gentle hints by her mother, Kara had the feeling that the elders would prefer it if she _didn't _come back alone.

Kara was the best woman for the job, and so she went back to the world of blue skies, green trees and golden sun that rained its wonder on her Kryptonian skin.

This time it was easier in some aspects, now that she knew essential Earthen things like clothing etiquette, greeting customs and acceptable ways to ask questions without seeming too much like an alien, but other things became trickier now that she had an Earthen name attached to her.

For starters, Linda Lee had, during Kara's time away, been declared missing and presumed dead. Kara didn't _have_ to return to Midvale this time, and she didn't _have_ to use the same Earthen name she'd taken before, but Midvale was place she knew, with landmarks she recognized and people she could count on to help her track down Kal-El.

Lucy had picked her up at the police station, practically leaping into Kara's arms when she saw her and going straight into a barrage of, "Oh my _gosh_ Linda where have you been we were so worried you I thought that crazy woman got you and we were looking for you for weeks and _where have you been?_"

"I don't know," Kara said, for she hadn't thought about this part in the plan. But Lucy wasn't really listening anyway, and started one of those quick rapid-fire arguments with the officers in the little Midvale station on how Linda had been involved in that bizarre affair involving that crazy woman who'd taken over the little town some months back, surely they remembered, they hushed it all up but _Lucy_ remembered and she sure as hell wasn't going to let some blue coats forget it just because the mountain wasn't there anymore and besides the rest of the town remembered and Linda was going to get out of there scot-free, all right?

Kara didn't understand this part of the Earthen judiciary system, but Lucy seemed to be very good at it.

"You missed most of the semester," Lucy said, once they were out of the station and out in the early winter air. "Normally I'd be all for that, but Danvers will probably want you to re-take the whole thing, which sucks."

"Actually, I don't think I'll be going back to school," Kara said.

When Lucy looked at her, she was surprised but not disappointed. "Got plans already? You going to look for a job?"

Kara made a show of looking thoughtful, though this was one part of the plan that she _had_ thought about in advance. "I was thinking of going to Metropolis."

"Oh mah _gosh_," Lucy gushed, grabbing on to Kara's arm as though she was going to fall over. "Metropolis? You're thinking real big, aren't ya?"

"It's the best place to go if you're trying to advance your career," Kara said carefully, remembering the various brochures she'd taken the time to read back at the police station. "And I'd like to advance my career a lot. All the way to advanced, in fact."

"With your smarts, no problem!" Lucy said, beaming widely. "Hey, I just had an idea!"

Kara tilted her head curiously, hoping that this next part would go exactly as she hoped. "What is it, Lucy?"

"I should introduce you to my sister, Lois!" Lucy said. "She's a city girl in and out, not like me, I may talk it but I haven't spent as much there since my folks shipped me out here to this dump but you know, she could totally show you around, maybe help you out a bit. Hey, what about your cousin, aren't you in contact with him?"

"Actually no," Kara said honestly. "I haven't been able to speak with him since I… came back."

"Man, that's such a shame," Lucy said, and Kara realized that they were strolling naturally back to the campus that had been her former Earthen home. "We got to let him know you're all right, your family's got to have been worried when you were gone, even if you are an orphan and all."

There was no sign of Ethan when they wandered on to campus, now much quieter than before as everyone who could take refuge in the warmed rooms of the campus buildings had done exactly that. Lucy signed Linda in as a guest for the day ("Let Lucy take care of you, okay? Just hush up, and follow me") and that would have been all there was to it, if Principal Danvers hadn't spotted the pair sneaking across the main hallways to South Dorm C.

"Lee!" Danvers barked, his face appearing round the corner of the open door to his office.

"Yes, sir," Kara said, slowing to an obedient halt despite Lucy's tugging on her arm.

"Skipped out on us, did you?" Danvers asked, waddling towards her. At this point, Lucy made an annoyed sound and quickly skipped round the corner away from Danvers' attention, for there are some things even a Lane won't do. Danvers didn't seem to notice Lucy either way, his little eyes focused solely on Kara as he said, "This fine educational establishment not good enough for you?"

"Family emergency, sir," Kara said quickly.

"Couldn't even do us the courtesy of letting us know before disappearing on us? You've caused a lot of paperwork, Lee," Danvers asked.

"I did, sir," Kara said. "I wrote a letter explaining the whole thing, sir, put it in your office the day I left. Maybe it slipped underneath your desk?"

Danvers looked uncertain at that, but he wagged a threatening finger at her anyway. As he turned to go back to his office to check, Kara took a quick look around to make sure no one was watching, and then did what only a Kryptonian with super speed could do. When he came back, holding a slightly crumpled letter and with a puzzled expression on her face, Kara was standing at the exact same spot that he'd left her, though if he had bothered to look carefully, he would have seen a bit of typewriter ink on the tips of her left hand fingers.

"Well, it seems that…" Danvers adjusted his spectacles and started on a little speech about the value of time etc., which Kara carefully listened to. As before, he seemed unnerved at her complete attention to his words, so he quickly waved her off and Kara was left to roam campus with his complete permission and as a guest at the Midvale Girls School, where she found Lucy's room on the 2nd floor of South Dorm C.

Lucy was in the middle of a telephone conversation, and since it was Lucy, even someone _without_ super hearing would have found her easily.

The room itself had mostly the same décor as its previous incarnation, though maybe there were even less books and more unwashed laundry on the floor. Lucy waved for Kara to sit on the bed, which she did, looking around with the same interest as before as she catalogued the various changes that marked the passage of time.

"I don't get what you're saying, slow down, will ya?" Lucy was saying into the phone. She briefly covered the receiver and mouthed to Kara: _My sister_, before removing her hand and saying to the listener, "Take deep breaths."

Kara looked at the phone; another Earthen invention that was so primitive that it was ingenious. She remembered fondly how, in the second week of her last visit to Midvale, she'd taken the common room telephone apart and converted it into a radar in one of her failed attempts to track down the omegahedron. It had failed, but she'd learnt some very phonetically-interesting Earthen languages.

"What?" Lucy's voice was softer now, and she turned her back to Kara, signaling that the conversation had gone into more delicate territory. "Are you sure?" Her voice dropped into a near inaudible whisper.

Kara tilted her head and focused, letting her hearing pick up the electromagnetically-modified voice from the upper portion of the phone handle. _"I took the test four times, Lucy. What are the chances of all four being wrong?"_

"Shut up, I hate math," Lucy whispered back. "But are you gonna… Is it that Dick whatissname?"

"_His name's Richard, okay,_" Lois said. "_And it's gotta be his. I mean it's… It's not like… Oh my god, Lucy, I can't do this. Not now. Not when…_"

"Hey, hey," Lucy's whisper was kinder now, soothing instead of urgent. "I'm here for ya, sis. You want I should come down to the city?"

"_Don't you have exams coming_?"

"Pfft, what's a little quality time with my big sister?" Lucy looked over her shoulder at Kara, who was studiously looking at the posters on the wall. "By the way, I got a friend with me, she's heading to Metropolis anyway, I'll come down with her over the weekend, how's about that?"

"_I'm not in the mood to play hostess, Lucy_."

"I'm not asking you to…"

Kara stopped listening in to their conversation at this point, as it was obvious that they weren't going to discuss either one of Kal-El's incarnations. So she let her eye wander back across the room, this time taking in the mess of discarded nicknacks and strewn magazines.

An article, partially wedged between the pages of an open notebook, caught her eye. Actually, it was half an article, the other half belonging to its missing mirror page (though it was not a surprise that the other page had been discarded because _this _page had a little "Photo by James Olsen" at the right hand corner of a photograph), but Kara picked it up to read it anyway.

When Lucy's phone call ended, Kara was still bent over the spread newspaper page, carefully going through the words for what was, for her, a third time.

"Yeah," Lucy said, sitting on the creaky chair opposite the mess that was technically her study table.

When Kara looked up at Lucy, her eyes were wide. "He's been gone for three months?"

"Yep, no sightings, nothin'," Lucy said, glancing over at the poster next to her wardrobe. "He flew off and just… didn't come back."

Kara looked at the poster of her cousin, one arm stretched upwards to the sky, the colors of the House of El proud and striking against the Metropolis skyline stretched out behind him. The first time that Kara had seen the poster, Lucy had explained to her that it was just an artist's rendition of the man, but that didn't make it any less Kal-El. She'd never seen him before, but it was _him_. She could just tell.

"Do you have any more articles like these?" Kara asked. "About him, I mean?"

"Sure, the library's full of 'em!" Lucy said, winking. "Besides, I can get some extra copies, 'cause my boyfriend's in the paper business, doncha know."

* * *

From reading the newspapers covering the events of the past year or so, Kara was able to piece together the following:

Kal-El, son of Jor-El, was missing. Except that he wasn't, it's just that no one knew where he was but he could come back at any moment, really.

There was a man named Lex Luthor who was now in jail, and that was good.

There were some other aliens whom Kara suspected were also Kryptonians who'd come to Earth and done a lot of damage, but Kal-El had stopped them so that was also good.

Then Earthen astronomers had detected what they thought were the remnants of Krypton. At this point Kara had put down the newspaper, borrowed a pencil and some paper from Lucy, and then carefully calculated the amount of light generated from the destruction of Krypton that could have reached Earth over the five dimensions within this time frame and the chances that what they saw was the real thing. After adjusting the warm coefficients a little, Kara was satisfied that it was at least possible, and then continued reading.

Kal-El had been seen visiting the astronomers in question, and that was the last official sighting of the man that the Earthens called Superman.

Then, there had been a lot more accidents and crime across the planet, along with a flood of sad, worried and angry letters in the correspondence section. Kara hadn't liked some of them, because they weren't nice at all.

There had also been an abrupt stop of articles with the little "As reported by Clark Kent" at the bottom of them.

Kara then folded up the full newspapers and returned to them to the library, but not before making photocopies of the important articles. Then she went to the school bookstore and purchased a few books on Metropolis, which she spent the rest of the night reading from cover to cover in a ritual that was not unlike homework.


End file.
